


Smoke and Mirrors

by PineTrain



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reverse Falls, Cigars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 21:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineTrain/pseuds/PineTrain
Summary: Cowritten with someone who asked to remain anonymous.





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Cowritten with someone who asked to remain anonymous.

Mabel held her hand out in front of her, fingers splayed apart as she relaxed into her chair. Her nails were perfect as always, but it never hurt to check again when the thought crossed her mind. She turned her palm towards herself and began another spur of the moment check.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” she said, each finger curling in turn starting with the pinky. Just as the thumb folded in, she quickly slipped it under her pointer and middle and, with a loud snap, flicked her hand into a gun gesture pointing straight up, a small blue flame now flickering above her pointer.

Mabel frowned, unimpressed with the appearance of the act. It was worth testing, because at least she saw how boring it was. She often had random thoughts about what may or may not be a good addition to the show and it was obviously best to test them beforehand. In this case, the thought had crossed her mind just as she was about to create the flame for another reason. It was merely a failed sideshow.  
  
Mabel waved her hand back and forth in small circles, enjoying how the cold fire waved about from the motion until she brought it towards her face. She gave one final twirl as her other hand brought a cigar to her lips. Holding the flame to the end of it, she puffed a few times and, satisfied it was lit, snapped her fingers again to douse the flame.

“That’s a disgusting habit.”

“You do a wonderful imitation of a broken record,” Mabel replied to her brother, his oft-repeated disdain barely worth her consideration. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dipper roll his and return to his preparations.

She didn’t smoke often, preferring to save the moments for special occasions. She somewhat agreed with Dipper’s sentiment that it was disgusting, but there was something so enjoyably powerful about the image of her reclining back with a cigar in her mouth. Like the wealthy robber barons of old grinning down at the social peons beneath them. It was a rare pleasure and damn did she love it.

The cigar itself was suitably ostentatious for its rare use. Comically large, as was proper for its intended expression of opulence, it was further adorned with gold symbols that only the most knowledgeable of occultists could recognize. The cinders where it burned kept the blue of the flame that had lit it; at least, until they fell to the ground and vanished as though they’d never existed. The smoke she blew twisted and curled with a life all its own, faintly forming rough images to the tune of her fancy. Mabel grinned as she gave a short puff to create a mouse, then a long one to create a cat, the results much in her character.

Feeling satisfied, she stood and walked to her mirror. Her hair was perfect, just like her nails, but, again, it never hurt to give a last minute check. She puffed out a small bird which hovered nearby, then set the cigar aside so she could do a few little changes.

“You said you had a different plan for the finale,” Dipper said, probably checking his hair as well.

“You’re unhappy I changed it,” Mabel stated. Dippers voice had carried no tone, but she knew him backwards and forwards. He didn’t respond, confirming her belief. She continued with a smile, “You’ll be shot out of a cannon.”

“I’m sorry?” Dipper said incredulously, clearly thinking she was joking.

“A cannon. We’ll shoot you out of it,” she grabbed the cigar and turned to look at him, ignoring his indignant glare, “and then in a puff of smoke… you’ll reappear.” She sucked on the cigar and blew another cloud, its transformation into a bowing man emphasizing her idea.

“And how do I do that? We’ve never practiced this,” Dipper said with a frown.

“Leave that to me, brother dear,” Mabel said with a smile.

Dipper rolled his eyes again, “I suppose I will, since you only indulge in that gross habit when you’re sure of yourself.”

“But of course,” Mabel winked.

“This is a terribly vulgar act for a show as prestigious as ours, you know.”

“Hm, I suppose it is a bit common, but we are performing for commoners, after all,” Mabel said with a shrug.

“True enough,” Dipper mused. “I will be putting a lot of faith in you to perform this correctly. I would rather not die so pathetically.”

Mabel grinned widely and pinched his cheek, “Oh, don’t worry, bro-bro, I have it all planned out.”

“Hmph!” Dipper grunted irritably, but she saw him smile as he turned away from her and left the room. He was always just short of hiding the fact that he enjoyed her games.

Mabel puffed her cigar again and blew one last cloud. It coalesced into a shooting star over a pine tree. “For good luck,” she murmured to herself as it faded, a teensy bit of worry hidden under her confidence in the trick’s success. She shoved the cigar into her hand, extinguishing the cold fire without pain, and slipped it into her jacket’s inner pocket.

———-

The show was sold out, as per usual. Gravity Falls was an extremely lucky town to have attracted a family so diverse in skills as the Pines. While Dipper and Mabel had learned a great deal in illusion from Stan and from the fascinating curiosities of Ford’s scientific exploration, they truly built upon the brothers’ legacies in how they merged the fake with the real in a way neither Grunkle ever could.

That was surely why Dipper was displeased with a Human Cannonball finish. It was impressive, of course, but it’d also been done since before even Stan and Ford had been born. Still, the classics are classic for a reason, and Mabel wanted to pay a bit of an homage to the entertainers of the past.

Plus, she’d come up with a particularly enjoyable twist on it. Dipper returning in a puff of smoke was a part of it, but it wasn’t enough to simply have him reappear if he didn’t disappear first. And though the cannon had the force to fire him out of sight of the audience, Mabel didn’t find that quite flashy enough.

So they came to the finale of the show. Mabel walked to the forefront, spotlight upon her as Dipper held back. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” she cried, “We are pleased to have entertained you tonight! Many who know us are aware of the Pines family’s affiliation with the stars.” Mabel gestured upwards, where a section of the Tent of Telepathy opened to allow a view of the star-filled night sky.

“To those who are not familiar with us, I am your Shooting Star!” She held her hand at an angle above her head before coursing it in an arc, a rainbow streak burning in the air behind it. Reaching its stopping point, Mabel snapped and white light flared from her hand in a typical five-pointed star. Mabel smiled as the audience clapped, the image remaining above her even as her hand fell to her side.

“My brother,” she turned to gesture in his direction, a second spotlight coming on to illuminate him, “is the Big Dipper, as you may have gathered from his birthmark.” Dipper gave a stiff bow as some more clapping occurred, less enthusiastic due to the lack of any impressive visuals. Mabel would get to that soon enough.

“Of course, he can be more than just his birthmark tonight,” Mabel pointed up at the sky again, the audience murmuring as they noticed the constellation directly above. “Tonight, I’ll make my brother one with the stars!” Mabel snapped again, a third spotlight focusing on the center of the stage as a large cannon began emerging from a trapdoor.

She removed her cigar from her jacket and relit it with another flame while the audience was distracted by stagehands setting up a ladder for Dipper to dramatically ascend as a drumroll began. He reached the entrance and paused, looking to Mabel. She dragged on the cigar and blew a puff of smoke to ensure it was properly lit.

Satisfied it was, she called out again, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Please join me in a farewell to my beloved brother!” Dipper rolled his eyes, though no one but her saw it as he gave a final bow and slipped into the barrel of the cannon to the applause of the crowd. Mabel walked to the fuse of the cannon, set up such that it would fire the instant it was lit.

Mabel took another puff as the drumroll grew to a crescendo, the smoke lingering about her shoulders to enhance her mystery. The drumroll finally stopped and Mabel removed the cigar to call out a final time, “One with the stars!”

With five swift moves of her arm, the blue cinders of the cigar drew a star, the last landing it on the fuse. While the star lingered in the air, the audience was distracted by the loud explosion of the cannon firing. Mabel’s hair blew to the side from the sound and though magic protected her eardrums from bursting due to proximity, it didn’t block out the astounded gasps as a blue streak shot into the air, just slow enough to see that it was clearly Dipper.

It flew higher and higher until it was perfectly centered in the night sky. The streak exploded violently, smoke surrounding the immediate area as electric, angry, blue crackles shot in every direction as though the very fabric of reality had been torn. Mabel took an idle puff while everyone was distracted, the small cloud forming into a facsimile of the sad triangle who wished he could have pulled something like that off.

She waved her hand and a breeze dragged the smoke away to reveal the Big Dipper, now much, much closer and with magical lines glimmering between the stars to illustrate the twinkling constellation. Anyone who wasn’t amazed by the blazing sight might notice that the real Big Dipper no longer appeared where it should. Another illusion, of course, but it’s remembering the small details that really makes a trick.

“My brother, ladies and gentlemen,” Mabel called, swinging her arm up towards the hovering image once they’d calmed a bit. “Truly now one with the stars! And yet,” Mabel took on a sad tone, “who would I be without my twin at my side? How can one star survive without its companions? As beautiful as he is now, I must have him back. I hope he will forgive me…”

Trailing off, she raised the cigar to her lips again as she looked straight up at the constellation. Drawing in deeply, the “stars” disintegrated into fine particles that spiraled towards the lit point. The final speck arriving just as her lungs filled, Mabel tore away the cigar to raise her arms dramatically above her head. Pausing for but a moment, she swept them down to spread in a bow, blowing the smoke out from left to right as she did so.

The volume was much greater than she possibly could have actually held, a fact not lost on the audience as she disappeared behind the dark blue haze that drifted slowly up. It filled a large portion of the stage before suddenly halting, then spiraled inwards, the cloud thickening deeply and slamming down in front of her. The smoke cleared quickly, revealing Dipper standing with a stately, serious expression. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers, the rest of the smoke shooting up to reconstitute the real Big Dipper.

The audience’s eyes followed in amazement, then dropped back to the twins. There was a moment of silence before the applause began, allowing Mabel to surreptitiously put out the cigar and hide it as she took Dippers side. They bowed once separately, then hooked their arms around each other’s waists and bowed together. Stepping backwards they gave a final bow before the curtain hid them.

Finally out of sight, they exchanged a look. Dipper frowned, Mabel smirked, then they went their separate ways to handle the closing of the show. They’d talk after.

——–

“You did fantastic, brother dear,” Mabel said as they relaxed in their room. “I knew you’d figure out the nature of the trick in time.” She retrieved the cigar yet again, noted it’s significantly diminished status from use, and relit it.

“You do know that it would be smarter to brief me on these things ahead of time, right?” Dipper asked irritably, “Did you have a plan for if I didn’t figure out what to do? We could have looked like fools.”

“Psh!” Mabel puffed out a cloud that formed into a pig and followed at her feet as she walked to her grumbly brother. “Like I said, I KNEW you would, but if it makes you feel better, yes, I’m not so stupid that I didn’t have a backup plan.”

Dipper regarded her stiffly, but she caught the quirks of his interior grin sneaking through the imperfect control of his visage. He finally gave in and smiled despite himself, “I’m just glad to find out my sister isn’t a complete idiot.” This was about as close as he came to admitting he liked her spontaneous mischief, too proud to say it outright.

A fact Mabel took into account when she came up with this trick, “Yes, I knew you’d figure out the backup plan. The original was so much flashier and you just had to interrupt it with your impatience. Oh well, they seemed to like it anyways…” Mabel shrugged and took another puff as she turned and walked away.

“Har har,” Dipper said in his ‘yeah, whatever’ tone.

Mabel didn’t answer except to look back with a grin and tap some ash from the cigar. Dipper’s eyes flicked to the falling grains and she could see the gears working, wondering if perhaps there was something more to it all that she had planned. That he had missed. Ah! She caught the flicker of frustration she was looking for. He had a number of them that only she could see, and this time it was a light twitch in the right eyebrow. The tiny recognition that she had come up with the trick to continue their ongoing competition and not for the benefit of the audience.

“You don’t know what I was going to do,” she taunted.

“You didn’t have anything else planned,” he said, likely more to convince himself that were true.

Mabel just hummed to herself and blew another puff of smoke. It lazily drifted over to Dipper, settling gently on his head in the form of a dunce cap. Neither of them moved for a few seconds, then Mabel giggled and sauntered off.

“Fine! How?” Dipper demanded, following her.

“Not telling!” she sang back, swiftly waltzing towards the stage, enjoying Dipper’s grumbles behind her. Reaching her destination, she flitted into the curtains.

“Mabel, come on, just tell m-”

Dipper’s voice caught just as Mabel’s foot did his ankle. It was a Looney Tunes level prank and Mabel would never let him hear the end of it. That taunting would have to come later though and she emerged to watch him stumble towards an open gap in the floor. The location of the cannon. He managed to twist back a look of disdain before he tripped into it.

Mabel snapped her fingers and the cannon began rising out just as it had during the show, though this time to an empty audience. Mabel caught the rim with her hand and rose with it. She lifted herself to sit on the edge and glanced down at the fuse on the ground. It began gradually floating up to her with a glow. Now much longer than during the show, Mabel grasped the end and slipped into the cannon.

Dipper grunted when she landed on him, but didn’t give any indication of pain, his pride already too hurt to allow that further insult. Working together, they maneuvered Mabel down in front of him within the tight confines. Pressed against each other, the light of the cigar’s tip was just enough to illuminate Dipper’s face.

“Is this how you’re going to explain the trick to me?” he asked. Mabel just grinned and held the end of the fuse to the tip, letting go when it sparked alight. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Oh bro-bro, you don’t know how lonely I was when you were ‘one with the stars’ and I was down here all by my lonesome!” Mabel said, crocodile tears in her eyes, “This time, let’s do it together.”

Dipper rolled his eyes again, but smiled as Mabel gave one last puff: A replica of her earlier pine tree and shooting star. They hugged each other tight as it fired and they shot into the sky to fill it with beautiful, twinkling light, blue cigar smoke trailing them all the way up.


End file.
